Guide for Authors

Archives of BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIOPHYSICS is an international journal dedicated to the dissemination of fundamental knowledge in all areas of biochemistry and biophysics. Manuscripts that contain new and significant information of general interest to workers in these fields are welcome. Sufficient detail must be included to enable others to repeat the work. The journal also invites timely reviews.

• Average first decision in under three weeks
• No page charges
• Completely electronic submission and review process
• All color is free in online version


Submission of manuscripts

It is a condition of publication that all manuscripts must be written in clear and grammatical English and be submitted to the Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics Web site at http://ees.Elsevier.com/yabbi. Minimal exceptions will be allowed. If you are unable to provide an electronic version of your paper, please contact the Editorial Office prior to submission (e-mail: abb@elsevier.com; telephone; (619) 699-6218; fax: (619) 699-6211.

Each manuscript is to be accompanied by an electronic cover letter outlining the basic findings of the paper and their significance. PDFs of all related manuscripts under consideration for publication must also be included with the submitted manuscript.

Authors should suggest at least four competent reviewers in their field and may also suggest individuals whom they wish to have excluded from the review process. The list of suggested reviewers should be compiled as a separate document.

The corresponding author will receive a decision letter from the Executive Editor. Revised manuscripts are to be submitted electronically.

Many acceptable papers require minor revision or condensation. It is in the mutual interest of both the authors and the journal that amended manuscripts be returned promptly. A revised paper will retain its original date of receipt only if it is received by the Executive Editor within 2 months of the date of return to the author.

Acceptable file types. Most word-processing packages are acceptable; however, we prefer that authors use a recent version of Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. Manuscripts saved with formatting intact are preferred. Rich-text format (.rtf extension) is acceptable, but plain text (.txt extension) files are discouraged. Submit each figure as a separate TIFF or EPS file.

Once a paper is accepted, ABB cannot use PDF or PostScript files because they do not allow editing of the text. Files created in layout programs such as Adobe FrameMaker or PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and Corel Ventura are unacceptable. Artwork should not be embedded within the manuscript. It must be supplied in electronic files separate from the manuscript file.

Manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that no substantial portion of the study has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere and that its submission for publication has been approved by all of the authors and by the institution where the work was carried out. Manuscripts that do not meet the general criteria or standards for publication in Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics will be immediately returned to the authors, without detailed review.

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting ("Public Access) policy. Elsevier facilitates author response to the NIH voluntary posting request (referred to as the NIH "Public Access Policy"; see http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm) by posting the peer-reviewed author's manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, 12 months after formal publication. Upon notification from Elsevier of acceptance, we will ask you to confirm via e-mail (by e-mailing us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com) that your work has received NIH funding and that you intend to respond to the NIH policy request, along with your NIH award number to facilitate processing. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for posting 12 months after formal publication. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly with PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited.

Copyright and permissions. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright, see http://authors.elsevier.com). This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided after acceptance.

If material from other copyrighted works is included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier Global Rights Department, P.O. Box 800, Oxford OX5 1DX, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com.

Preparing your manuscript

Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout. Symbols and foreign characters can be set with word-processing software by altering typefaces to a corresponding font that displays the appropriate character. Use the Symbol font for Greek characters whenever possible. When special characters are unavailable, please note them in a separate cover letter. Use the software's spell-checking and page-numbering capabilities before final transmission. The manuscript will be edited according to the style of the journal, and authors must read the proofs carefully. Pages should be numbered consecutively and organized as follows:

The title page (p. 1) should contain the article title, authors' names and complete affiliations, footnotes to the title, a short title of less than 65 characters, and the address for manuscript correspondence (including e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers).

The abstract (p. 2) must be a single paragraph that summarizes the main findings of the paper in less than 150 words. After the abstract a list of up to 10 keywords that will be useful for indexing or searching should be included.

The introduction should be as concise as possible, without subheadings.

Materials and methods should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced.

Results and Discussion may be combined and may be organized into subheadings.

Acknowledgments should be brief and should precede the references.

References to the literature should be cited by numbers in square brackets in the text and listed in numerical order at the end. Use the most recent edition of the Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index for abbreviations of journal titles. Only articles that have been published or are in press should be included in the references. Unpublished results or personal communications should be cited as such in the text. Please note the following examples.

[1] W.D. Strayhorn, B.E. Wadzinski, Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 400 (2002) 76-84.

[2] R. Hesketh, The Oncogene FactsBook, Academic Press, San Diego, 1995.

[3] O.R. Mettam, L.B. Adams, in: E.S. Jones, R.Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age, E-Publishing Inc., New York, 1999, pp. 218-304.

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many word processors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves on a separate sheet at the end of the article.

Endnote users should use the reference format template for Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

Figures. Each individual figure or graphic must be supplied as a separate, stand-alone file. Figure files must be named with their respective numbers and graphic types such as SmithFig1.tif, SmithFig2a.tif, etc. Long file names are acceptable.Use EPS or TIFF file formats; TIFF is preferred. Artwork submitted in TIFF should adhere to the following resolution settings: half tones (color/gray scale): 300 dpi; line art (black and white) and mixed images (halftones with text or line art): 600 to 1200 dpi. If it is necessary to import graphics from a vector-based drawing program (e.g., Adobe Illustrator) into a raster-based program (e.g., Adobe PhotoShop) in order to produce a TIFF file, a resolution of at least 600 dpi is required for quality reproduction. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork.

Figure manipulation. Whilst it is accepted that authors sometimes need to manipulate images for clarity, manipulation for purposes of deception or fraud will be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly. For graphical images, this journal is applying the following policy: no specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Nonlinear adjustments (e.g. changes to gamma settings) must be disclosed in the figure legend.

When creating your figures, use font sizes and line weights that will reproduce clearly and accurately when figures are sized to the appropriate column width. The minimum line weight is one-half point (thinner lines will not reproduce well). Eliminate all excess white space from the borders of each figure. Do not include figure legends or other extraneous text in a graphic file; figure legends should be provided as text, placed after the reference section in the main manuscript file. Number figures consecutively with Arabic numerals.

Color figures. Color figures. If together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures, then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. Should you wish to have your figures in colour in the printed version of your article, you will receive an invoice on log-in of your paper after acceptance.

Please note: Because of technical complications that can arise in converting color figures to "gray scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print), please submit in addition usable black-and-white image files corresponding to all the color illustrations.

Cover art. Suggestions for cover art are welcome and 4-process color is encouraged. This artwork may be a figure from the paper or a complementary figure. Submit art in electronic form (TIFF and EPS files only) to the Editorial Office via e-mail (abb@elsevier.com). A short (one-line) legend should accompany each photograph.

Tables should be numbered with Arabic numerals and cited consecutively in the text. Each table should be titled and typed double-spaced. Units must be clearly indicated for each of the entries in the table.

X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. Factors and coordinates for structures determined by X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy should be deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB; http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/; info@rcsb.org) at the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics or at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI; http://autodep.ebi.ac.uk/). Manuscripts submitted to ABB should include the file name for the macromolecule and a reference to the database holding the coordinates.

Nucleotide sequence data. For nucleotide sequence data authors are required to submit original nucleotide or amino acid sequence data to a databank such as GenBank or EMBL. A footnote that includes the accession number should be included on the title page. It is preferable that the sequence data be deposited either prior to submission or by the time of acceptance of the manuscript. However, a footnote can be added at the proof stage if the material is deposited after acceptance. For further information please contact the Editorial Office or GenBank or EMBL directly.

GenBank/DNA sequence linking. Authors wishing to enable other scientists to use the accession numbers cited in their papers via links to these sources should type this information in the following manner:

For each accession number cited in an article, authors should type the accession number in bold, underlined text. Letters in the accession number should always be capitalized (see example below). This combination of letters and format will enable the typesetter to recognize the relevant texts as accession numbers and add the required link to GenBank sequences.

Example: GenBank accession nos. AI631510 , AI631511 , AI632198 , and BF223228 ), a B-cell tumor from a chronic lymphatic leukemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048 ), and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117 ).

Authors are encouraged to check accession numbers used very carefully. An error in a letter or number can result in a dead link.

In the final version of the printed article, the accession number text will not appear bold or underlined. In the final version of the electronic copy, the accession number text will be linked to the appropriate source in the NCBI databases, enabling readers to go directly to that source from the article.

Animal studies

Policy regarding publication of experiments on unanesthetized animals conforms with the standards for use of laboratory animals established by the Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Experiments in which curariform agents are used must be justified and details of the steps taken to reduce or avoid distress to the animal must be provided, particularly with regard to electrical stimulation.

Preparation of supplementary material

Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer additional possibilities for publishing supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips, and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com). To ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please provide the data in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. Please note, however, that supplementary material will not appear in the printed journal. Files can be stored on 3.5-inch diskette, ZIP disk, or CD (either MS-DOS or Macintosh). For more detailed instructions, please contact the Editorial Office (e-mail: abb@elsevier.com; telephone; (619) 699-6757; fax: (619) 699-6211).

Proofs

Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author as a PDF file by e-mail. To avoid delay in publication, only necessary changes should be made, and proofs should be returned promptly. Authors will be charged for alterations that exceed 10% of the total cost of composition.

E-Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.

Author inquiries

For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit http://authors.elsevier.com.

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